


The Beginning of the End

by Steerpike13713



Series: Exiles Together [4]
Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: First Meetings, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, M/M, Occupation of Bajor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-05
Updated: 2017-05-05
Packaged: 2018-10-28 12:32:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10831341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Steerpike13713/pseuds/Steerpike13713
Summary: In which Elim Garak meets a very intriguing young human on Terok Nor, and may have gotten in over his head.





	The Beginning of the End

The Palandine affair was over, really, before it had even begun. One conversation, one nearly-public embrace was too little to build anything on, and too much for Tain to ignore. He had known of Garak’s visits to the park, it seemed, from the beginning, and Garak had never expected that would be otherwise. A little sentiment towards Tolan’s memory, controlled and never allowed to exceed its proper place, could be permitted. Whatever it was Tain had made of his watching Palandine could not. All the same, the thought of her was a torment now. He found himself haunted by her – her blue-black hair, the sadness in her face the last time he’d seen her, the feeling of her in his arms on the day they had finally spoken again, for the first time in…what was it now, two decades? Nearly three, and now he had spoken to her again he could not be rid of her. She and her daughter would join Barkan Lokar on Bajor, and Garak…well, there would always be another mission. Romulus again, this time, to meet an old contact from his gardening days who was suspected of having ties to another Oralian dissident group. This whole rigmarole, though, sending him in to see Dukat, the Union’s finest example of just why the flesh should never be allowed to interfere with the workings of the state…the message was almost childishly easy to decipher, and _that_ cut deep. Tain was disappointed in him, was as close as he had ever come to being honestly enraged that Garak had been so obvious as to get caught.

He had spent most of the journey to Terok Nor prowling the two-man shuttle, trying to restrain himself from snapping at the other pilot whenever he tried to make conversation. If he had been sent elsewhere – to Bajor, perhaps, where they always needed new agents, or one of the more troublesome colonies, hotbeds of sedition that they were, rather than this make-work assignment on Romulus – he would not have objected. Or maybe it was the simple necessity of dealing with Skrain Dukat, the most intolerably self-satisfied opportunist ever to disgrace the name of the Union. Oh, Dukat was hardly alone in despising Garak, and he should be poor-spirited indeed to return the dislike of all of them, but even if Dukat had thought Garak the wonder of the Union, it would have made no difference to what he was.

They were met, at Terok Nor, by the usual pair of heavily-armed security officers, and escorted through to the Prefect’s office. Skrain Dukat’s own private province, a lucrative commercial enterprise on the edge of the quadrant that attracted all types for all reasons. If there was not already a permanent operative on the station, Tain had gone mad. It was Dukat himself, then, for whom Garak’s presence was intended as a message. He allowed himself a slight smile at the thought. Small wonder Tain had chosen him – almost exquisite in its cruelty, that decision, to send Dukat his father’s killer and let him do _nothing_. That would burn as nothing else, a reminder for as long as Garak was on this station that the Obsidian Order were the ones who held the power on Cardassia, even in Dukat’s little fiefdom orbiting Bajor. A reminder, if Dukat needed one, of just how truly insignificant he, his grudge and Garak were in the greater workings of the State. It was a reminder that had not come a moment too early, to Garak’s mind, although if Procal Dukat’s death had not been enough to instil it, Garak doubted one visit from him would do. The station itself was grey and bleak, charmless and hopeless, and Garak couldn’t help but feel it a fitting reflection of its commander as they were escorted through the filthy Promenade, where Bajoran labourers and their Cardassian overseers played out the daily dramas of slave and master. How very predictable. Equally predictable was the site of the commander’s office, raised on a slight dais and overlooking the military installation that sat at the heart of the ore refinery and had done since Dukat took up his post at Terok Nor. One man, one cog in the machine elevated above all others, at a remove from his command…how very typical of the mode of thinking that had become fashionable in the political class since the Occupation began. Dukat did not look around when Garak entered the office, but that was to be expected. Rather less expected was the nervous young man – Bajoran? No, human – with the tricorder in his hand whose eyes had widened and whose voice had stuttered as Garak stepped inside.

“I do see your point, doctor,” Dukat was saying, as the young man dragged his eyes away from Garak and back to his work. “But with the recent attacks, I cannot see that access to medical care has done much to quell Bajoran unrest.”

“Not amongst the Resistance, maybe,” the human allowed, adjusting the tricorder as Dukat turned his head to offer access, “But…with all due respect, sir-” If he had been Cardassian, that would have been perfect second-tongue, radiating _inferior-submissive-respectful-admiring_ , and mercies, even Dukat was not fool enough to _believe_ that, was he? Garak could see the young man’s eyes from here, and there was nothing submissive, nothing respectful, certainly nothing _admiring_ about the look in them now. “The Resistance is a lost hope. Whatever you do, your- your generosity will only be read as a sign of weakness by the rebels. But by allowing the rest of the population medical treatment, and placing no cap on the numbers beyond my time and my abilities, it might limit support from the wider population.”

Dukat hummed. “Your sympathies with the Bajorans should not be allowed to affect your judgement, doctor. Besides, they have shown themselves ungrateful enough for what they have been offered.”

“Because of the caps,” the doctor said quickly, and if there was a sudden, startling ripple of desperation through his body in imprecise second tongue, “It seems…arbitrary. To them. Most people outside Cardassia don’t know or care about resources or quotas, so long as they have what they need. Assigning them a single doctor, and then putting caps on how many can be treated, rather than what time can be spared…it’s too easily attributed to Cardassian malice, rather than simple expediency.”

Surely, not even Dukat could have missed the subtle irony flavouring those last few words? Garak raised a brow-ridge, and was startled to see the doctor’s eyes flick to him, wide and suddenly fearful. Resistance? Or…no, if he were he would not be exposing himself this openly, even the Bajorans had more subtlety than that. And _human_. Dukat’s taste for off-world exotica was well-known in the right circles on Cardassia, of course, but so long as it remained safely confined behind closed doors, the Order and the Central Command both were content to ignore it. A mistake, to Garak’s mind, but then, he had not approved of Dukat’s appointment in the first place, and no-one had thought to ask him then, either. After the business with Legate Porania, though, Garak hardly felt himself enough in Tain’s favour to suggest discreetly removing the present Prefect of Bajor. Still…a human doctor on Terok Nor. Easily spun into Federation links, potential spies, an ugly scandal that could be enough to remove Dukat from the position of influence he _scarcely_ deserved…

“I suppose you are going to make yet another request to be allowed to treat the labourers here? I have told you before, Doctor, I can hardly lend out my own physician-”

“Of course.” The doctor’s eyes flicked downwards, and even without second-tongue Garak knew ‘demure’ when it was being performed so clearly. “But-” Gritted teeth, a slight tightening of the fingers, and even if Dukat could not see it, Garak was not nearly so blind. “With the recent…unrest…over injuries in the ore refinery, it might work as a temporary measure? At least until Odo has found the people responsible for this sabotage.”

A long, thoughtful pause. “I’ll take it under advisement, doctor,” Dukat said at last, “That will be all.”

The doctor paused for a moment, then swallowed and nodded and stepped away, leaving Dukat free to turn to face the courier he so clearly expected to be young, naïve, over-awed by the Gul’s little dominion on this miserable station on the very edge of the Union. It was quite satisfying to see the smile slide off Dukat’s face at the sight of Garak, to see his second-tongue flicker before being forced into the expected forms of _superior-condescending-expectant_.

“I’m surprised they sent you,” Dukat said, as the young doctor made his excuses. “Does Enabran Tain have no other uses for you, then?”

Garak raised a brow-ridge. “You ought not to use that name too lightly. One never knows who might take you at your word.”

“Oh, I’m quite sure the Order will have no cause to object to my running of this station. Search all you like,” Dukat’s smile widened slightly, “I’m simply astonished they sent _you_. For such a…minor piece of work.”

“Oh, I just happened to be passing through,” Garak said lightly, “And it hardly seemed worth the trouble of sending another…courier…for something so insignificant.”

It was almost pathetic, really, how satisfying it was to see Dukat’s hackles rise at the implication. He had spent too long off active duty, living alone with his books and his orchids and just the occasional sight of Palandine to brighten his days. There was the usual volley of toothless barbs, and probably Dukat would quite like to arrange an unfortunate accident for Garak before he left the station, but really, if he couldn’t evade the painfully obvious machinations of a petty martinet like Dukat, Garak would _deserve_ death.

In his assigned quarters, later, and mostly for amusement’s sake, he hacked into the station’s computer network to pick over what he could, and was disappointed to find that the Union was already well-aware of the presence of Doctor Julian Subatoi Bashir, Federation exile with a list of charges to his name that could impress even Garak. Resisting arrest, sabotage, a few different varieties of forgery and fraud, murder, suspicions of espionage, _treason_. Garak stopped at that one. Well. A man who will betray his own state is not a man who can ever be trusted again. So says Garak’s earliest education, so says Tain. Still…Dukat’s _personal_ physician. Not a post that had existed before Doctor Bashir was brought to the station, and Dukat’s health had never seemed a particular worry of his before. No sign of any particular improvement in salary from the station doctors – indeed, Bashir’s pay matched that of the juniors lek for lek – but no official record of what those private health concerns might be. For a moment, Garak toyed with the supposition that ‘personal physician’ was just a coy euphemism, but discarded it quickly. Comfort women and prostitutes were excellent sources of information, and almost all of them were better liars than Bashir.

There was little else of interest – he’d been hoping for at least a few financial misdeeds, but evidently Dukat’s vices lay elsewhere – and soon enough Garak shut down the search, and stretched, and considered where he might go for a decent meal in this floating barrack. Dukat was known to be fond of strolling the station Promenade, and there had already been more than a few attempted assassinations on such occasions. Seeing Garak there would unsettle him, and that was, after all, what Garak had been sent here to do. Besides, he’d been given what seemed to be the smallest single room on the station, and already it was starting to feel a little confining for his tastes.

If anyone had asked – when Bashir did ask, later – Garak would say it was a matter of coincidence, that he encountered the young doctor on the Promenade that night. In fact, it was nearer morning by the time Garak stepped out, the gated section of the Promenade where the Bajoran workers not fortunate enough to have been granted housing slept. And Dukat wondered why he faced resistance. Give a people food and distraction and they would not care what else you took from them, and the Bajorans had neither. Already, the Resistance was growing bolder, Dukat’s failures more obvious, the faction within the Central Command that supported withdrawal gaining in support and confidence with every fresh dispatch from the front. For the time being, Tain wished the Occupation to continue, and so it could not be allowed to go too far, but the first rumblings were already being heard. He loitered a while on the upper level, looking down, trying to gauge the mood of the place, before he spotted the young doctor and, on a seeming whim, decided to speak to him. Later, he would call it a whim to Julian, to himself a calculated attempt to find information, to anyone else who asked…well, it hardly mattered, as no-one did.

“It’s Doctor Bashir, isn’t it? Of course it is. May I join you?”

The doctor looked up, startled, and Garak took the opportunity to scrutinise him more carefully. Unruly hair, a little overlong, pulled back from his face, wide dark eyes, fine features. Not unappealing, if one liked the type, and it so happened that Garak did.

“What- Oh. Oh, yes, of course. Um…sir.”

Garak smiled faintly as he fell into step at the doctor’s side. “No need for that, Doctor. Allow me to introduce myself – my name is Garak. We’ve met already, of course, but the Gul does seem to see all attention not given to himself as rather an insult.”

The corner of Bashir’s mouth twitched at that, though his eyes remained wide and slightly nervous as they flickered up to where Gul Dukat was standing on the next level up, watching them. Garak turned to look too, and smiled at the Gul, whose lips curled back into something like a snarl.

“Might I be allowed to buy you a drink?” he asked, turning back to Bashir with his most harmless, charming smile.

Bashir shook his head. “I don’t,” he said simply.

“Dinner, then? I’ve found eating alone to be quite a…lonely…experience.” He caught Bashir’s eye on the second-to-last word, second-tongue spinning out into _equal-mild-harmless_ , and saw the doctor’s stance relax slightly.

“I suppose you’ll devise any number of reasons to seek me out, instead of…well, any number of other people aboard this station?”

Garak’s smile widened. “Do you intend to force me to?”

Bashir pretended to consider it. “No,” he said at last. “Not this time.”

They ended up in an establishment called Quark’s, sitting at a quiet corner table, pointedly not drinking, and the owner had looked positively flabbergasted to see Bashir there at all. Bashir was looking carefully at the table, avoiding Garak’s eyes, and carefully not looking at the other patrons – mostly the local garrison. Bashir and the Ferengi behind the bar were the only two non-Cardassians in the room. This didn’t stop the Ferengi from bustling up to their table, grinning widely.

“Doctor Bashir! Good to see you back again – look, uh, you know I can’t-”

“I know, Quark,” Bashir said flatly. “We’re just here for dinner.”

The Ferengi nodded, and visibly relaxed at that. “Ok, good to hear – getting kicked off the station ‘d be pretty bad for business. ‘Specially out an airlock, if the Gul really did mean that part.”

“I wouldn’t take the chance,” Bashir said, with a wry, twisted smile, and looked at Garak, “I’m sorry, am I keeping you?”

“Not at all, doctor.” Garak smiled, and glanced at the Ferengi, who got the hint at once and asked for their orders before disappearing off without a backwards glance. Well. He had thought, before this next meeting, that this would be a simple enough case of plying the doctor with alcohol and letting that work his secrets out of him. Not the best form of interrogation, or the most skilled, but quick and serviceable and possible in the limited time they had. Evidently that would not be possible, and he smiled at the doctor, half-genuinely, because alcohol was almost as unsatisfactory a means of extracting information as simple physical pain.

“So,” Bashir said, with a smile that only looked slightly forced, “What brings you to Terok Nor?”

“Oh,” Garak made a careless gesture. “Orders. The courier service waits for no man.”

Bashir’s eyebrows lifted. “You don’t look much like a courier.”

“How is it you expect a courier to look?”

“Uniformed?” Bashir suggested dryly, his eyes flicking over Garak’s beautifully-cut dark suit.

Garak paused for a moment. Of course, the whole station knew what he was. He was here as Tain’s voice, a sign of his power, a reminder that the Order was there, and that Dukat should be cautious. “I’m off-duty.”

“You weren’t earlier.” Bashir smiled at him, nearly a smirk. “You haven’t asked.”

Garak raised his eye-ridges. “Is your life that fascinating?”

“Most people do.” Bashir’s eyes flicked downwards, “I don’t mind it.”

Discounting the obvious lie…well. Confessing _treason_ , even against one of Cardassia’s enemies, was hardly something that went down easily with most citizens of the Union. Garak himself could conceal and contain his reaction, but that didn’t mean he didn’t feel it, the instinctive revulsion at the enormity of such a betrayal. Still, traitors were something Garak had to deal with often enough in his work – indeed, assignments like this one to Romulus would hardly exist without them.

“I think,” Garak said meditatively, “I’d rather figure you out myself, doctor.”

Outworlder he might be, but Bashir had lived more than a year now among Cardassians. He tipped his head to one side. “Me? Oh…I’m an open book.”

“Quite so.” Garak let his smile widen, and laid his hand on Bashir’s wrist, his eyes lingering a moment at the doctor’s throat, where the collar of a uniform cut for Cardassian ridges had, finding none, slipped down to reveal a tempting hint of brown collarbone. “And…if I may be allowed to read it, doctor…you did permit me to join you. You might, if you so chose, have sent me packing at no detriment to yourself.”

“And left you to eat dinner alone? How very rude of me.”

Their drinks arrived, and Garak took advantage of the chaos to test a few more of his assumptions. The espionage charge was, clearly, nonsense – Bashir could hardly hide his dismay at the sight of Garak’s kanar. Was the doctor a less recovered addict than he wished to appear, perhaps? In any case, his hands were steady but his eyes still sharp, and his second-tongue signs were too stiff and too clear and too clearly _practiced_ for that despite how smooth they had been earlier. Garak’s tongue flicked out, tasting the air and drawing it over his s’oc in anticipation of the puzzle to be unravelled.

“How are you finding Cardassia, so far?” he asked, more to watch Bashir’s reactions than because he was really interested in the answer.

Bashir shrugged, “I’ve never seen it, and if this-” he glanced theatrically around the bar, “-is representative than I can’t see how the Cardassian species has survived this long.”

Garak clicked his tongue. “Oh, hardly. This is Cardassia, just as all the colonies are Cardassia – but it’s hardly the best Cardassia has to offer. Would you judge all the Federation based only on Starfleet?”

“I might have, once.” Bashir said neutrally, toying with the handle of his cup. “But you admit, there isn’t much chance to see more of the Union with my duties keeping me here.”

Garak was quite certain, now, that Bashir had no more desire to see more of the Union than he had to return to the Federation. There had been something in those words that was just a touch too sly, too close to the tone he had used in dealing with Dukat.

“Yes, your duties…quite peculiar, really, that the Gul suddenly felt the need of a private physician. Usually, one has to make Legate at least before such _eccentricities_ are tolerated.”

A flash of something in the eyes – fear? And then Bashir’s face smoothed out. “I’d have thought being unquestioned dictator of a whole planet would be close enough.”

“Hardly _unquestioned_ , doctor. Gul Dukat reports to the Central Command, as must we all. Besides,” Garak added, since this line of enquiry seemed unlikely to bear fruit, “There are other ways of seeing more of the Union than simply visiting them.”

“Am I supposed to take your word for that?” Bashir asked, all dry irony once again. “I’d hardly think a courier officer had need of other means.”

Garak shrugged, “Need…perhaps not. But then, one gets far more of a _sense_ of a place from literature than is sometimes possible upon visiting – especially visiting for purely professional purposes.”

“Yes.” Bashir glanced down, “I’ve been meaning to make a start on Cardassian literature, but between my duties and not knowing where to start I haven’t had much opportunity to read since I came here.”

“You prefer your old favourites from the Federation, I suppose?” Garak asked, raising his brow-ridges.

Bashir laughed. It was not an altogether pleasant sound. “If I had any with me, I’m quite sure I would. As it is, I came to Bajor with nothing but the clothes on my back, and finding human literature in Cardassian space would cost me more than I can spare – especially at Quark’s prices.”

Garak cocked his head questioningly to one side, but Bashir did not elaborate. “Well, then,” he said, “I hope you intended to ask for recommendations, doctor, for now you’ve told me of this appalling oversight, I can hardly leave without offering a few suggestions.”

“I’m all ears.”

The doctor, it turned out, liked what seemed to be the human form of enigma tales, although strangely they seemed only ever to have one guilty party, which seemed quite counter-intuitive to Garak. Bashir also had strong opinions on plays and poetry which, even if they did not align at all with Garak’s own, were still well-considered if not always brilliantly argued. It seemed to have been a long time, too, since Bashir had really talked to anyone. Oh, he had let slip hints here and there of a friendship with the shape-shifter Dukat had chosen to appoint as head of security, but most of those hints seemed to suggest that this ‘Odo’ was not by any means a talkative person, and that Bashir certainly was. Quite unfortunate, really, that Garak was certain now that there was something there, something hidden. The doctor had deflected every one of Garak’s sly, probing questions, with such apparent innocence that even Garak could not be sure, the first time, if it was deliberate. Once was happenstance, twice…Palandine would say twice was coincidence, but Garak had never trusted the idea. And the third through fifth times had no excuse. To borrow a phrase from the one human novel Garak had ever read, and manifestly failed to understand, curiouser and curiouser.

Bashir excused himself once dinner was paid for, claiming he’d taken the sunlight shift for the morning and really ought to get back to sickbay. Garak’s next shuttle would be leaving mid-morning, giving him a little more time in which to probe Dukat’s arrangements here, testing for cracks. Still, he found himself reluctant to end their conversation – how long had it been since Garak himself had sat and talked with someone for so long at a stretch? Pythas had never been much for conversation, Palandine and he…well, that was long past now, and would not be rekindled. He should remedy that, when he had the time. Find someone quite insignificant who would never know who Garak was or why they had started talking, and chatter on about something completely inconsequential, no doubt driving any observer mad trying to figure out a code that was not there. Well, it was something to consider.

The business on Romulus was, as Garak might have predicted, pure make-work. Tain would never have wasted Garak on such a task if he had not been seriously displeased. At least it was over quickly, the greatest part of the difficulty being the length of a journey to Romulus. Really, it was nearly a working holiday, a description which would not have been at all to Tain’s taste, and appealed to Garak only out of spite. The most remarkable part of the whole enterprise comes when, while idling and waiting for a contact in a disreputable part of what Garak cannot quite help but think of as the Romulan version of a caravanserai district, he spotted a rather shabby shopfront and decided, on a whim, that it would be as good a place as any in which to wait. And, if the shop-owner had not coughed and suggested in an undertone that less state-favoured texts were to be found in the back room, that story might have held water.

He had not been thinking of Julian Bashir when his eyes fell on the data-rod which the old woman who ran the shop had informed him, in a discreet undertone, contained the complete collected works of a classic Terran author from the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. All the same…hmm. Bashir had been hiding something, and hiding it well, but then, it had only been a first meeting. And he had mentioned missing human literature. A gift, then, to soften him up a little, convince him to trust, maybe introduce the discreet suggestion of repayment…yes, that would do _very_ nicely.

“You’ll take it, then?”

Garak turned his most appealing smile at the old woman, “Yes,” he said. “I think I will.”


End file.
